{two year anniversary}

Today marks our 2-year wedding anniversary which blows my mind even now as I write it since it feels like a week ago that we were loading up a Uhaul full of wedding DIYs to head out to the desert and celebrate with 130 of our closest friends and family.  Even though we are only 2 years in as far as our wedding date goes, Chris and I were actually together for almost 10 years before making it official. While I certainly don't claim to know everything it takes to make a successful marriage, I do know that every year we have been together has been even better than the one before.  If we can keep that up for many years to come then I'd like to think we've got it figured out.

Last year Chris surprised me with a weekend trip to Palm Springs to celebrate our first anniversary (you can see a little video I made from that trip here)  This year (in addition to our anniversary gift tradition) we are going decidedly more low-key with a dinner tomorrow night at one our favorite places in Chicago.

    

{our wedding photo album}

I am so excited to finally have the physical copy of our wedding photo album in my possesion!! I have been working on creating this book for a couple months now- continuously tinkering with different photo choices and layouts.   I chose to use Blurb's photo services for our wedding album because I have always had such a great experience with them (you can see the series of photobooks I made with them as well as a link to a super helpful review in this post).

I chose their biggest format which is 12" by 12" square for our album since I knew that all the photos I would be using would of a high enough quality to handle the huge size of the pages.  Initially I debated keeping with a simple one photo per page layout to really highlight each and every shot, but in the end I wanted to include sooo many photos that this would have been unreasonable.  The book includes a variety of layouts from 1 or 2 photos on a page to 4 photo collages to two full page photo spreads.  I only included two pages of text in the entire book which are our wedding vows that we each wrote and surprised each other with during the ceremony.  Blurb just released a line of thick "pro-line" paper which is 140 point paper which costs extra per page, but worth every single penny.

Our book ended up being about 240 pages since I decided at the last minute to include 80 or so pages at the end of my favorite photobooth shots.  Initially I thought the photobooth pictures should be in a separate book, but there are too many great shots that really capture the feeling and emotion of the party/reception that I couldn't leave them out. 

Although the pictures are not as high of quality as they are in the actual printed book, you can see the entire book in digital preview format right here.

**no compensation or sponsorship has been provided to me by Blurb- I really just love their service and quality product!

Here are a few snapshots of our album:

{one year anniversary trip video}

One of the best decisions we made with our wedding was deciding at the last minute to splurge on videography.  I love to watch our highlight video every now and then because it completely transports me back to that day.

Our DLSR camera actually takes great high quality video and I have been meaning to shoot more with it as well as learn how to edit it.  The trip to The Parker Palm Springs that Chris surprised me with for our anniversary seemed like the perfect chance to try it out!  Here's the video we put together using footage from both our DLSR camera and my Iphone then edited in iMovie.   After figuring out the basics of the video editing software, putting together the video was surprisingly quick and easy.  While I definitely have some room for improvement on both shooting video footage and editing it, having this great little memory of our trip definitely motivates me to want to make more videos of future trips.

Our 4 day trip to LA and The Parker Palm Springs was a much needed trip to warmer weather to escape the dismal spring that Chicago is having.  This video sums up our trip which was basically comprised of drinking cocktails, laying by the pool, drinking champagne, playing lawn games and drinking more cocktails - oh and celebrating our first year of marriage!

{DIY table number napkins}

Today I'm sharing another simple DIY project we created for our wedding, the custom napkins we created that also doubled as table numbers.  This was definitely one of those projects that was a labor of love.  Table numbers are usually staked in the floral arrangements or set alongside them and you simply have to create one per table, but I chose to make this project which would have the table number displayed on every single place seating.

I fell in love with this project when I first saw it on Twig & Thistle, but I figured it would be way more work than it was worth to create 130 napkins for our guests.  I changed my mind as soon as we decided to do long dinner tables put end on end.  We would still need to assign table numbers to the 13 tables so that guests could locate their seats, but I was concerned that guests might get confused about where a certain table started and ended since the tables were placed together.  These DIY napkins offered the perfect solution and allowed us to make some tables hold more than others by simply making 10 napkins for a certain table number rather than 8 which helped tremendously with the fully assigned seating.

This project took a good amount of time, but the effort required is minimal as long as you have the right tools.  The 3 inch circle punch is an absolute must for this project as is a high quality cotton napkin that doesn't have any texture (i.e. a waffle textured napkin wont work!).  You can see the full instructions and download the file for the numbers over at Twig and Thistle here. 

 {image via Twig & Thistle}

 {we could not have finished this project without the help of chris' mom!}

{for Chris and my seats, we created our crest on the napkins instead of the table numbers since we were pretty sure we would know where our seats were!}

{DIY triangle fringe garland}

In case you missed it last week on Green Wedding Shoes, head over there right now to get the full tutorial on how to make the fringed triangle garland we hung over our dance floor at the wedding.  This garland is basically the same process as the photobooth backdrop.

Right now we are currently living in moving box world (looks something like this) as we prepare to move to Chicago on Saturday morning.  We will be driving a moving truck along with these good friends for four days so posting might be a little light next week.  As soon as we are up and running at our new place I promise to share all the details!

{DIY "printed" wedding signs}

One thing that was on my project list for the wedding from the very beginning was to create a very large sign for the bar menu.  There is always a mad rush on the bar as soon as cocktail hour begins, but guests usually can't see the bar menu choices until they get to very front where they can finally read them on a small sign.  We decided the way to alleviate this issue would be to make a huge stained wood sandwich board sign and then paint all menu choices in white paint.  The second we painted the first letter onto the sign, we found it was looking incredibly messy with the paint lines seeping into the grain of the wood.  After a little brainstorming, we figured we could print all the letters onto white cardstock and then glue them to the wood signs.  This method worked so incredibly well that we decided to make more than just the bar sign- adding in a sign for croquet, restrooms, parking and the photobooth all using only two 4' by 8' plywood boards!

You can even buy the signs from our wedding here & here.

See below for step by step instructions.

what you need:

• plywood for signs - we used two 4' by 8' pieces of plywood which yielded two 3 ' by 4' sandwich board signs and two 2' by 4' flat signs
• wood stain 
• two hinges per sandwich board sign
• cardstock
• spray adhesive
• exacto knife
• scissors
• painters tape
• level

1. cut all wood to size, stain and assemble sandwich boards using two hinges for each sandwich board set.
2. write or type up exactly what you want your signs to say before printing letters so that you dont forget any letters or words.
3. now you will print out your actual letters for the signs. First you need to select your font, I highly recommend an all caps font that is relatively thick. "Bebas" (available for download here) is what we used. As a reference, for our large signs we did about two letters per page and for the bar choices we made the letters about 2.5 inches tall.
4. In order to cut the letters, we typed them up in a light grey color and then mirrored them before printing- you can follow this tutorial for mirroring the letters in Microsoft word.  Once they are printed you can follow the outline of the light grey in order to cut out the letter and the "front" of the paper will remain white. 
5. Using painters tape and a level create a line as a guide for your letters. The painters tape guides will help you from having uneven text lines- especially if you are doing a sign with a lot of text like our bar sign.
6. Before attaching your letters, lay them out in order so that you can get a good sense for your spacing and to save you from forgetting or searching for letters in the middle of your project.
7. Coat the back of each letter with spray adhesive and firmly attach to the wood along your painters tape guide. 
8. Since this is cardstock not paint, it does have the ability to get dirty or rip so if you do not plan on using your signs right away, I recommend wrapping them in saran wrap to protect the letters.

 {sandwich board assembled}

 {mirrored letters ready to be cut- grey on the back & solid white on the front}

 {use an exacto knife to cut out the centers of letters}

{DIY fringed tissue "sweets" banner}

Our entire wedding took place outdoors which meant that our only option for hanging things was suspending it between palm trees or building backdrops (like this or this).  For the dessert table, we decided rather than build another backdrop, we would add all the interest to the front of the table with a statement sign.  I choose to make a huge "sweets" sign using foam core and fringed tissue after seeing this party a while back. Other than picking which direction to go with this project I actually cant take any credit because my amazing bridesmaids crafted this a few months before the wedding when we all got together for a wedding related craft session.

what you need:

• tissue paper in various colors (at least three different colors will give you a good variation in the design)
• box cutter or exacto knife
• fringe scissors (not necessary but will make your life significantly easier)
• glue runner or double sided tape
• foam core boards (one per letter)
• ribbon

1. trace letters on foam core- my sweets banner was about as tall as the table so we used one piece of foam core per letter. You will not need to worry about being neat with the pen marks of the tracing since you will be covering them later
2. cut letters out using a box cutter or exacto knife
3. cut out fringed tissue pieces by cutting strips of tissue about an inch wide then fringe the entire length of your strips making sure to leave about 1/4 inch at the top un-fringed. 
4. starting at the bottom of your letter place your first color of tissue strip down.  Cut pieces from your long strips of fringed tissue so that they are long enough to hang off the edge of the letter a little bit. 
5. Secure each layer of fringe with a strip of glue runner or double stick tape.  
6. Place the next layer of fringed tissue over the last overlapping the previous layer by about 1/2 inch.  
7. Continue placing and securing layers.  Once you have covered the entire letter you can go back and trim the edges of fringe strips off. 
8. Hot glue the finished foam core letters to a piece of ribbon to use for hanging. 

 {foam core letters}

 {tracing remnants}

 {placing first layer of fringe at bottom of letter}

 {strip of glue for each layer of fringe}